Murders, rapes and assaults dropped nationally over the past year, but car thefts and larceny spiked in the FBI‘s latest national crime report released Monday.
The FBI‘s 2022 Uniform Crime Report notes more than 11 million crimes with data collected from police departments and law enforcement agencies that serve more than 311 million Americans, or 93.5% of the U.S. population.
The 1.7% overall decline in violent crime recorded by the FBI was largely driven by fewer homicides and non-negligent manslaughter (down 6.1%).
The decline in homicides comes as most major cities continue to see less bloodshed as they move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The nation saw a 29% spike in the murder rate in 2020 before a slight decline in 2021.
The downward trend accelerated in 2022, when the FBI said the violent crime rate was 380.7 per 100,000 people — a smidgen better than 380.8 per 100,000 people in 2019.
AH Datalytics, a New Orleans-based research firm, shows that cities across the country have seen substantial year-over-year decreases in homicides through 2023.
That includes New York City (down 10%), Los Angeles (down 24%), Chicago (down 11%), Houston (down 19%) and Philadelphia (down 24%).
Meanwhile, cities such as Cleveland, Dallas, Memphis, Miami and Washington, D.C., are among the outliers whose violence has worsened as they return to pre-COVID normalcy.
The more than 200 homicides recorded in the District of Columbia in 2023 marks the third consecutive year the nation’s capital has hit that grim milestone. The District last recored more than 200 homicides in three consecutive years nearly two decades ago.
“This is a bad year. I can’t sugarcoat that,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said after the city recorded its 200th homicide last month. “I certainly wouldn’t try to tell that to anybody who’s listening to gunfire outside of their homes or who has lost a loved one.”
The FBI data also shows that a significant decline in rapes (5.4%) and a 1.1% decline in aggravated assaults.
The only violent crime that increased in 2022 was robbery (up 1.3%). Part of that may be driven by an 8.1% increase in carjackings, which the FBI treats as a subset of robbery offenses.
Roughly half of all carjackings took place between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. A large majority of the car thefts involved the use of a weapon to coerce people out of their vehicles.
Meanwhile, property crimes increased by 7.1% nationwide, according to the FBI report.
In addition, larceny and theft rose by 7.8% in 2022.
Some states, such as California, are aiming to crack down on “flash mob” robberies by investing millions into local police departments.
Motor vehicle thefts also spiked up to 10.9% in the past year, with juveniles being major contributors in the theft of nearly 1 million cars nationwide in 2022.
Nearly 18% of males arrested for car theft were underage, and roughly 14% of the females arrested were juveniles, according to the FBI.
Those trends don’t appear to be slowing down in 2023, with cities such as Chicago, Minneapolis and Oakland enduring the brunt of the car thefts.
Many of the thefts started with the Kia Boyz TikTok challenge, in which people were taught how to hotwire older model Hyundais and Kias with just a screwdriver and a USB cord.
“That Tiktok challenge of how to steal the Kias and Hyundais, that was the biggest thing,” Matt Nalett, who operates the volunteer-run Chicago Stolen Car Directory on Facebook, told WTTW-TV in August. “And kids are like, ‘We got nothing to do, let’s steal cars.’ When they were out that two years of COVID, they were bored and had nothing to do and stealing cars left and right.”
Chicago has recorded nearly 23,000 cars stolen in 2023 — a massive jump from the 13,300 documented at this point last year.
Oakland has seen almost 12,000 cars stolen this year. Last week, a group of nine teens were arrested in the Bay Area city on charges of stealing a Hyundai SUV and leading the California Highway Patrol on a high-speed chase.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara sounded the alarm on youth-involved car thefts earlier this year after an 11-year-old was arrested with a modified gun in a stolen car.
As of Monday, the city has documented 6,439 auto thefts — surpassing the record-setting number of 6,283 in 2022.
More juveniles were victims of deadly shootings last year as well, with 11.8% more youths dying from gunfire. Adults saw a 6.6% decrease in those killed in shootings.
There was also a slight increase in the number of assaults on police officers (up 1.8%).
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.